‘You little bastard, McKee!’ Wren spat in Edgar McKee’s face.

‘What have you said to him, Clay?’ demanded Edgar McKee. ‘What have you said to turn him against me?’

‘I didn’t say a word to turn him against you. You said all the words that were needed to turn him against you.’

‘Start walking back to your cell, McKee,’ said Sergeant Harris, restraining Wren on the floor.

Clay held up the key to his cell door. ‘You heard Sergeant Harris. I’ll make sure you get locked up.’

‘You’re the fucking albatross, McKee!’ screamed Wren at Edgar McKee’s departing back. ‘Not me. You. You’re a fucking enemy agent.’

101

1.15 am

Clay hung on to the sides of a mug of coffee as if it was a life raft as she watched the unfolding edited highlights of Edgar McKee’s visit to the Travelodge for his sexual encounter with Susan Hurst. At the point when he followed her out of the hotel room, she asked Winters, ‘Have you watched the unedited CCTV footage? From the time he first arrived until they both left?’

‘I rolled it forward at double speed,’ said Winters. ‘He wasn’t physically capable of snatching Francesca Christie. He was getting his nasties off on Susan Hurst behind the door of Room 1002. That door didn’t open during the time they were both behind it. No one went into the room. No one came out.’

She considered the news Gina Riley had given her half an hour earlier, when she’d shown her the supporting evidence from easyJet, confirming Edgar McKee’s story that he’d flown out to Amsterdam in late July and had returned to England after the middle of August. Sandra O’Day had gone missing on August 1st and her body was discovered on August 11th.

Clay walked to the window and stared out through the rain-streaked glass at the lights on the Mersey Estuary.

Turning to Winters, she said, ‘I don’t care what information comes in to corroborate his alibis, I’m holding Edgar McKee in custody until the very last second of the twenty-four hours we can keep him. He might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was with Wren on the footpath, but where’s his van now? That’s enough for me. He’s part of a tag team and he’s up to his neck in it.’

The landline phone on her desk rang out. Despite the fact that good news never came over the phone at that small hour of the night, she wished for it as she picked up the receiver and said, ‘DCI Clay.’

‘Eve, it’s me.’ Detective Sergeant Terry Mason sounded down. The good news she’d hoped for just wasn’t going to happen.

‘Hit me with it, Terry.’